Join or leave a project

Written for version 0.1.14.

What it is for

Helping someone start contributing to a project at the level of help they want, and helping someone who is leaving hand over so the next person can carry on from the repository alone.

Joining

The assistant starts from what you want to contribute and what you already know, and gives one next step at a time. It explains the project through its own documents:

  • the website, the way in for anyone who doesn’t code: a clinician starts at Clinical background and Study design and methods;
  • the analysis plan, which says what the analysis must do, with markers for questions still open;
  • GitHub issues, which hold those open questions and known gaps;
  • AGENTS.md, which says how work is done here and who decides what;
  • ARCHITECTURE.md, for people who will work on the code.

Ways to contribute:

  • Clinical input without code: comment on a decision issue with evidence and reasoning, or review the plan or the site. Only the named deciders settle a question, but anyone can inform one. A decider who doesn’t use GitHub can decide by email; their exact words are then posted in the issue.
  • Code: a change on a branch, offered as a pull request. The assistant explains only the Git steps your own tool needs.
  • Review: anyone can ask for one (see Review).

It also offers your own ChatGPT or Claude project for the repository, with instructions for how you like to work (review only, step by step, or hands-off), and an optional check-in that reports what is waiting on you.

Taking over from someone

The assistant starts from the repository: the plan, open issues, open pull requests and their notes. It does not need the previous person’s files or chats. Ask it, for example:

  • “I’m taking over this project from the last lead. What’s done, what’s open, and what’s waiting on me?”
  • “Who decides what on this project?”

Leaving

When you say you are leaving, or a check-in sees your end date coming, the assistant works through four things with you:

  1. Documents that exist only in a chat, on your laptop or in email, moved into the repository.
  2. Open issues and pull requests: finished, handed on, closed with a reason, or left open with a note saying what each waits on.
  3. Requests you made that have no answer yet, recorded so they aren’t lost.
  4. Ownership: if you own the repository, transferring it to the PI, and then fixing the website links and switching the site back on, since GitHub does not redirect the website.

Not everything has to be finished. Something left open with a clear note is fine.

What it will not do

  • Require R, Git or Quarto for work that doesn’t need them.
  • Ask you to paste a token or password.
  • Change account settings, install software or publish without your say-so.

Ask it, for example

  • “Explain this project’s question and show where I can help with the protocol. Assume I can’t read R.”
  • “I know R but not GitHub. Help me make one contribution.”
  • “My rotation ends Friday. Help me hand over.”

Where the detail lives